Polarisation of electroweak gauge bosons at the LHC

Abstract

We present results for the polarisation of gauge bosons produced at the LHC. Polarisation effects for W bosons manifest themselves in the angular distributions of the lepton and in the distributions of lepton transverse momentum and missing transverse energy. The polarisation is discussed for a range of different processes producing W bosons such as W+jets and W from top production. The relative contributions of the different polarisation states vary from process to process, reflecting the dynamics of the underlying hard-scattering process. We also calculate the polarisation of the Z boson produced in association with QCD jets at the LHC.